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September 29, 2004

Nanotechnology Incentives

Let's say you are the leader of a country containing hundreds of millions of people, and growing fast. Let's say you have few natural resources — no great reserves of petroleum or precious minerals — and that the vast majority of your population is illiterate and in poverty. You have a limited industrial base, a miniscule tax base, and slim prospects for economic competition in the world, short of grossly exploiting your own poorly trained work force.

What would you do? It sounds like a no-win situation, but it's not far from the dilemma in which China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Nigeria, and many other nations find themselves.

A story this week in the Washington Post describes the environmental catastrophe taking place in China as that country struggles to modernize and raise their standard of living. Reporter Joshua Kurlantzick writes: "the country is now home to the world's worst environmental problems," and "it is totally unprepared to combat them."

By some measures, at least six of the world's 10 most polluted cities are in China, including Beijing and Urumqi. Several have the highest rates of airborne carbon monoxide in the world. The country's environmental agency says that living in Chinese cities with the worst air pollution does more damage to an average Chinese person's lungs than smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. . .

China's environmental protection agency estimates that the quantities of carbon, nitrogen and other gases in Chinese cities will make the air too toxic to breathe in the most polluted urban areas within a decade.

It's an ugly story. Forests are being ripped up and turned to desert; rivers are filled with garbage, human waste, and dead fish; and even city aquifers are loaded with heavy minerals. Why must this be? The article continues:

The environmental catastrophe is the result of a storm of factors.

In the past two decades, China has witnessed an extraordinary migration from rural to urban areas, as more than 200 million people, looking for work, have moved to the cities, overstressing resources. In the next two decades, another 300 million are expected to join them. . .

As far back as 1982, the Chinese leadership placed an environmental protection section in the national constitution. Today, the director of the government's environmental agency frequently warns that China's development is ecologically unsustainable, and that the country will not be able to reverse the damage once it has attained a higher gross domestic product.

These warnings go unheard, because breakneck urbanization and industrialization have benefited too many Communist Party leaders.

China is committed to an historically unprecedented rate of rapid industrialization, and the country often is touted as an economic miracle, but at what cost?

Those of us who read (and write) this blog know, of course, that there is an answer to these problems: a clean, cheap, environmentally friendly form of light manufacturing that will provide high quality goods to all without raping the land, and that could turn China into the envy of the Earth. It may be just a matter of time until nanotechnology can deliver on these promises and more, but will it be soon enough?

A few days ago, we mentioned here that molecular manufacturing might, in fact, be invented somewhere in the developing world sooner than in the United States, Europe or Japan. Considering the enormous incentives — economic, environmental, and, yes, military — that less developed nations might see in nanotechnology, this scenario does not seem at all implausible.

You also could make a strong argument that such a beneficial technology should be developed as rapidly as possible. You could argue that the humanitarian and ecological benefits alone should be enough to motivate all leading nations to band together and bring this to pass. You could say this, and CRN does say this!

Comments

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I would think that with your advocacy of "responsible" nanotechnology you would eschew this kind of simple boosterism. Nanotech proliferation into the hands of governments with a track record of oppression, intolerance and environmental destruction could bring disaster. Most developing countries lack the checks and balances of Western democracies which can guide technology development down responsible paths. How realistic is it that a country like China, let alone a third world dictatorship, will use this power to solve its environmental problems rather than to extend its millitary reach?

If Drexlerian nanotech works it will be a great power for both good and evil. No one today can accurately foresee whether its net effect will be positive or negative. Given these uncertainties I view it as irresponsible to press for rapid development without constant reminders about the perils we face if we choose that path.

Hal, I agree with you. To me, it's a given that rapid development must be accompanied by stringent assessment of risk management options. I took for granted that this would be assumed.

With that caveat, however, we should press for the earliest possible safe development scenario, because the costs of delay are so appalling. And we also must realize that if Western democracies dawdle, other nations may race ahead, with, as you say, potentially disastrous consequences.

I think the whole concept of "stage managing" the development of nanotech by a single bureaucratic entity is laughable at best. If "dry" nanotech is possible (I am still skeptical of this), it will most certainly be developed by many parties, in many places, at once. China would certainly be one of the places that it would be developed. As you point out, they certainly have the environmental and economic motivation to develop it.

The Chinese are planning to build at least 30 one-gigawatt nuclear plants by 2020. They expect to build at least 300 such plants by 2050. The current design of plant they are building is similar to (but not the same as) the integral fast reactor technology that was developed during the late 80s and 90s in the U.S. They will also start building many of the "pebble-bed" reactors that they are currently developing. One of the advantages of pebble-bed technology is that it is modular and that they can be mass-produced (just like cars) in an assembly line.

I would really like to see the Chinese drag out the old L5 space power and space colonization scheme and implement it using nanotechnology and nuclear power. They've got lots of desert (in the middle and western parts) for building the receiving antenna farms.

The current issue of Fortune is all about China. Make no mistake about it. The Chinese are serious about becoming a "developed" country.